Jeanne Les Flambeaux is the black sheep of the family. Her family
members are highly regarded chefs and restauranteurs  Jeanne can't
cook. Her family owns a ruby scepter and a crystal skull that they
revere as luck pieces  but Jeanne can hear the skull talk. Her
family loves her, but thinks she's weird and fairly useless  Jeanne
agrees with them. So when Jeanne's lover and cousin Johnny absconds
with the expensive ruby scepter, she knows she has to catch him and
recover the heirloom or find herself in horrible trouble with her
parents.

Her search takes her to Las Vegas, then to a temple on radioactive land in
Nevada, and eventually to a cult in Mexico. With Crane, the talking
skull, she meets mysterious people, learns about her own talents, and
tracks down the elusive WIJ (Woman In Jeopardy) serial killer. She
finds love and belonging and helps her family heal from old wounds and
buried secrets.

Magic realism requires a deft hand and a light touch. Unlike hardcore
fantasy  be it high or urban  magic realism is at its best when
it remains firmly rooted in reality. The shocking juxtaposition of
flights of fancy and mystical revelations within the familiar confines
of the world we know have the potential to deeply affect the reader's
psyche. Written well, the form can be spectacularly successful;
written poorly, it can rapidly deteriorate into laughably twee New Age
schlock. Coyote Cowgirl is a disconcerting mix of both.

Ms. Antieau has some great ideas here; the basic plot is interesting
and the writer obviously knows her setting. Oh, and she knows her
cooking, too  the recipes included at the end of the book are
marvelous. Some of her scenes  again, the cooking scenes come to
mind first  are rich, luscious, vivid, evocative. See how a minor
character, a prep cook, describes himself:

"I am Fernando Madero. I live in Sosegado where my aunt Vesta and
cousin Miguel came to find peace. That's what Sosegado means in
Spanish: 'peaceful.' I write songs and sing them to coyotes. I make
wishes on falling stars and read the poetry of Jimmy Santiago Baca. I
can cut faster than anyone I know  cut vegetables that is. I love
the smell right before the monsoons come, when everything in the
desert waits in anticipation, and I love the taste of the desert in
the middle of the summer when it is so hot my eyelids hurt and I know
there is no hope of rain. That is who I am."

Lovely, rich language. And yet some of her writing here is so twee and
theatrical that I cringed. Consider this passage, as Jeanne's mother
describes her impressions of a nuclear test blast:

"It was as if when the bomb exploded, I felt the pain of everyone
who had died in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and beyond that. The very Earth
seemed shattered. Like an electric shock treatment. It was as if with
each bomb blast, the planet was given an electric shock. A terrible
one. Wiping out part of the planet's brain. With each bomb blast,
something was lost. But I didn't know what. The ability to clean the
air? Regulate viruses and bacteria? Repair the ozone? All this
happened in a millisecond."

Ugh.

The overall quality of the writing fluctuates so much, in fact, that
it's hard to stay interested in the story. Character development is
terribly uneven: the villain of the piece has as much personality as
a cardboard movie standee. The story is told, as opposed to revealed;
at least two major "surprise" plot points are telegraphed too easily
and too far in advance. At the same time, the author uses the
shameful convention of keeping secrets from the reader that are
necessary to the understanding of the novel. When writers do this,
whipping out the revelation at the end without any previous hints,
the ending cannot help but seem false and contrived.

Coyote Cowgirl has all of the necessary ingredients to be a great
book; unfortunately, like the cinnamon flavored scrambled eggs in one
scene, there are other extra ingredients that spoil the recipe. It's
not horrible; even more reprehensible: it's mediocre.